Magic Universe

A Grand Tour of Modern Science

Nigel Calder

A delightful journey through modern science, full of engaging stories on topics from aggression to quantum tangles.

Nigel Calder is one of the most experienced of science writers, and combines wonderfully engaging writing with a deep and wide understanding of science.

Magic Universe

A Grand Tour of Modern Science

Nigel Calder

Description

As a prolific author, BBC commentator, and magazine editor, Nigel Calder has spent a lifetime spotting and explaining the big discoveries in all branches of science. In Magic Universe, he draws on his vast experience to offer readers a lively, far-reaching look at modern science in all its glory, shedding light on the latest ideas in physics, biology, chemistry, medicine, astronomy, and many other fields. What is truly magical about Magic Universe is Calder's incredible breadth. Migrating birds, light sensors in the human eye, black holes, antimatter, buckyballs and nanotubes--with exhilarating sweep, Calder can range from the strings of a piano to the superstrings of modern physics, from Pythagoras's theory of musical pitch to the most recent ideas about atoms and gravity and a ten-dimensional universe--all in one essay. The great virtue of this wide-ranging style--besides its liveliness and versatility--is that it allows Calder to illuminate how the modern sciences intermingle and cross-fertilize one another. Indeed, whether discussing astronauts or handedness or dinosaurs, Calder manages to tease out hidden connections between disparate fields of study. What is most wondrous about the "magic universe" is that one can begin with stellar dust and finish with life itself. Drawing on interviews with more than 200 researchers, from graduate students to Nobel prize-winners, Magic Universe takes us on a high-spirited tour through the halls of science, one that will enthrall everyone interested in science, whether a young researcher in a high-tech lab or an amateur buff sitting in the comfort of an armchair.

Magic Universe

A Grand Tour of Modern Science

Nigel Calder

Table of Contents

Introduction: Welcome to the Spider's WebAlcohol: Genetic Revelations of When Yeast Invented BoozeAltruism and Aggression: Looking for the Origins of Those Human AlternativesAntimatter: Does the Coat that Sakharov Made Really Explain its Absence?Arabidopsis: The Modest Weed that Gave Plant Scientists the Big PictureAstronautics: Will Interstellar Pioneers be Overtaken by Their Grandchildren?Bernal's Ladder: PointersBig Bang: The Inflationary Universe's Sleight-of-handBiodiversity: The Mathematics of Co-existenceBiological Clocks: Molecular Machinery That Governs Life's RoutinesBiosphere From Space: 'I Want to Do the Whole World'Bits and Qubits: The Digital World and Its Looming Quantum ShadowBlack Holes: The Awesome Engines of Quasars and Active GalaxiesBrain Images: What Do All the Vivid Movies Really Mean?Brain Rhythms: The Mathematics of the Beat We Think ToBrain Wiring: How Do All Those Nerve Connections Know Where to Go?Buckyballs and Nanotubes: Doing Very Much More with Very Much LessCambrian Explosion: Easy Come and Easy Go Among the Early AnimalsCarbon Cycle: Exactly How Does it Interact with the Global Climate?Cell Cycle: How and When One Living Entity Becomes TwoCell Death: How Life Make Suicide Part of the Evolutionary DealCell Traffic: Zip Codes, Stepping-Stones and the Recognition of Life's ComplexityCereals: Genetic Boosts For the Most Cosseted Inhabitants of the PlanetChaos: The Butterfly Versus the Ladybird, and the Mercury EffectClimate Change: Shall We Freeze or Fry?Cloning: Why Doing Without Sex Carries a Health WarningComets and Asteroids: Snowy Dirtballs and Their Rocky CousinsContinents and Supercontinents: Collage-making Since the World BeganCosmic Rays: Where Do the Punchiest Particles Come From?Cryosphere: Ice Sheets, Sea-ice and Mountain Glaciers Tell a Confusing TaleDark Energy: Revealling the Power of an Accelerating UniverseDark Matter: A Wind of Wimps or the Machinations of Machos?Dinasours: Why Small Was Beautiful in the EndDiscovery: Why the Top Experts are Usually WrongDisorderly Materials: The Wonders of Untidy Solids and Tidy LiquidsDNA Fingerprinting: From Parentage Cases to Facial DiversityEarth: Why is it So Very Different From All the Other Planet of the Sun?Earthquakes: Why They Never May be Accurately Predicted, or PreventedEarthshine: How Bright Clouds Reveal Climate Change, and Perhaps Drive ItEarth Systems: PointersEco-evolution: New Perspectives on Variability and SurvivalElectroweak Force: How Europe Recovered its Fading Glory in Particle PhysicsElements: A Legacy From Stellar Puffs, Collapsing Giants and Exploding DwarfsEl Nino: When a Warm Sea Wobbles the Global WeatherEmbryos: 'Think of the Control Genes Operating a Chemical Computer'Energy and Mass: The Cosmic Currency of Einstein's Most Famous EquationEvolution: Why Darwin's Natural Selection Was Never the Whole StoryExtinctions: Were they Nearly All Due to Bolts From the Blue?Extraterrestrial Life: Could We All be All Alone in the Milky Way?Extremophiles: Creatures that Thrive in Unexpected PlacesFlood Basalts: Can Impacting Comets Set Continents in Motion?Flowering: Colorful Variations on a Theme of Genetic PathwaysForces: PointersGalaxies: Looking for Juno's Milk in the Infant UniverseGamma-ray Bursts: New Black Holes Being Fashioned Every DayGenes: Words of Wisdom From Our Ancestors, in Four ColorsGenomes in General: The Whole History of Life in a Chemical CodeGlobal Enzymes:Why They Now Fascinate Geologists, Chemists and BiologistsGrammar: Does it Stand Between Computers and the Domain of the World?Gravitational Waves: Shaking the Universe with Weighty News
/>Gravity: Did Uncle Albert Really get it Right?Handedness: Mysteries of Left Versus Right That Won't Go AwayHiggs Bosons: The Multi-billion-dollar Quest for the Mass-makerHigh-speed Travel: The Common Sense of Special RelativityHopeful Monsters: How They Herald a Revolution in EvolutionHotspots: Are There Really Chimneys Deep Inside the Earth?Human Ecology: How to Progress Beyond Eco-ColonialismHuman Genome: The Industrialization of Fundamental BiologyHuman Origins: Why Most of Those Exhumations Are Only of Great-auntsIce-rafting Events: Glacial Surges in Sudden Changes of ClimateImmortality: Should We Be Satisfied with 100 Years?Immune System: What's Me, What's You, and What's a Nasty Bug?Impacts: PhysicalConsequences of Collisions with Comets and AsteroidsLanguages: Why Women Often Set the New Fashions in SpeakingLife's Origin: Will the Answer to the Riddle Come From Outer Space?Mammals: Tracing Our Milk-making Forebears in a World of Drifting ContinentsMatter: PointersMemory: Tracking Down the Chemistry of Retention and ForgetfulnessMicrowave Background: Looking for the Pattern on the Cosmic WallpaperMinerals in Space: From Stellar Dust to Crystals to StoneMolecular Partners: Letting Natural Processes Do the Chemist's WordMolecules Evolving: How the Japanese Heretics Were VindicatedMolecules in Space: Exotic Chemistry Among the StarsNeutrino Oscillations: When Ghostly Particles Play Hide-and-seekNeutron Stars:Ticking Clocks in the Sky, and Their Silent ShadowsNuclear Weapons: The Desperately Close-run ThingOcean Currents: A Central-heating System for the WorldOrigins: PointersParticle Families: Completing the Standard Model of Matter and its BehaviorPhotosynthesis: How Does Your Garden Grow?Plant Diseases: An Evolutionary Arms Race or Just Trench Warfare?Plants: PointersPlasma Crystals: How a Newly Found Force Empowers DustPlate Motions: What Rocky Machinery Refurbishes the Earth's Surface?Predators: Come Back Brer Wolf, All is ForgivenPrehistoric Genes: Sorting the Travelling Salesman from the SettlersPrimate Behavior: Clues to the Origins of Human CulturePrions: From Cannibals and Mad Cows to New Modes of Heredityand EvolutionProtein-making: Looking Forward to Seeing Them ShimmyProteomes: The Molecular Corps de Ballet of Living ThingsQuantum Tangles: From Puzzling to Spooky to UsefulQuark Soup: Recreating a World Without ProtonsRelativity: PointersSmallpox: The Dairymaid's Blessing and the General's CurseSolar Wind: How it Creates the Heliosphere in Which We LiveSpace Weather: Why it is Now More Troublesome Than in the Old DaysSparticles: A Wished-for Superworld of Exotic Matter and ForcesSpeech: A Gene that Makes us More Eloquent Than ChimpanzeesStarbursts: Galactic Traffic Accidents and Stellar Baby BoomsStars: Hearing Them Sing and Sizing Them UpStem Cells: Tissue Engineering, Natural and MedicalSun's Interior:How Sound Waves Made Our Mother Star TransparentSuperatoms, Superfluids and Superconductors: The March of the Boson ArmiesSuperstrings: Returning the Cosmic ImaginationTime Machines: The Biggest Issue in Contemporary Physics?Transgenic Crops: For Better or Worse, a Planetary Experiment Has BegunTree of Life: Promiscuous Bacteria and the Course of EvolutionUniverse: 'It Must Have Known We Were Coming'Volcanic Explosions: Where Will the Next Big One Be?Surces of QuotesName IndexSbject Index

Magic Universe

A Grand Tour of Modern Science

Nigel Calder

Author Information

Nigel Calder is the author of dozens of books on science, including Einstein's Universe, Restless Earth, Nuclear Nightmares, Spaceship Earth, and The Manic Sun. The former editor of New Scientist, he has conceived and scripted many special science documentaries for BBC Television. He lives in the United Kingdom.

Magic Universe

A Grand Tour of Modern Science

Nigel Calder

Reviews and Awards

"The ideal compendium for non-scientists of any age."--Sunday Times

"A marvelous read...it can be enjoyed like a high-quality magazine."--Mark Ridley, Times Literary Supplement

"He is really exceptional in his energy, his range of comprehension, and his quality as a writer.... Nigel Calder remains supreme in his range and depth...he goes to immense trouble to get things right, and also takes pains with the clarity and elegance of his writing."--Sir Martin Rees, FRS, Astronomer Royal